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MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF: Gwen Hasselquist

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the mysterious death of a mother of two is ruled a suicide. But her loved ones believe there’s more to her death than meets the eye. And as soon as we looked into her case, the cracks in the official ruling started to show.
Duration
1h 7m
Broadcast on
27 Oct 2025
Audio Format
other

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the mysterious death of a mother of two is ruled a suicide. But her loved ones believe there’s more to her death than meets the eye. And as soon as we looked into her case, the cracks in the official ruling started to show. 

  • If you have any information about Gwen Hasselquist or her death or movements the night of March 20th, 2020, please email [email protected].

If you or a loved one is struggling with thoughts of suicide or self-harm, you can call or text the Crisis and Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or visit 988lifeline.org. 

You can learn more about The Good segment and even submit a story of your own by visiting The Good page on our website!

 

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Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and the story I have for you today is one that has been keeping me up at night because it shows you just how quickly a case can be closed when on paper, it looks open and shut, even when nothing about the details add up because when a mom of two is found in the Puget Sound in Washington at the start of the pandemic, investigators were quick to rule her death a suicide, but that didn't make sense to her loved ones, or to me. So we started asking questions about how a devoted mom could vanish in the dead of night, about the witness who never told the same story twice, and about the husband whose answers only raised more questions. But once we started pulling at those threads, we realized that nothing about this story is simple, and it unraveled into something far more chilling than we expected. This is the story of Gwen Hasselquist. [Music] All right, let me take you back to a time that we all wish we could forget. It is March 20, 2020. The global COVID pandemic had finally gripped the US, and we couldn't just drink bleach to make it go away, despite previous advice from a president. Now, where our story takes place in none other than Washington state, schools are closed, grocery shelves are empty, and stay at home orders are just about to take hold. But while most people are hunkered down inside, Washington state trooper Daniel Knox is out on his regular patrol in Pierce County. The streets are quieter than normal, but not yet completely free of traffic or traffic calls. And just after midnight, dispatch radios him about a minivan stopped on the shoulder of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which is like this mile-long suspension bridge that crosses over the Puget Sound from Gig Harbor to Tacoma. Now, Trooper Knox drives over, and he spots it right away. A Chrysler minivan pulled over against the guardrail with all four doors wide open, and it's not just stopped. It's clearly been in an accident, like the passenger side is wrecked, like scraped and dented all the way down, and all three windows on that side have been broken. The glass is shattered and scattered all over the road. When Trooper Knox gets close, he also notices a guy reaching into the van through the driver's side door. And the guy is holding an open beer, kind of talking to himself and just like not making a ton of sense. So Trooper Knox is probably thinking that this is a pretty straightforward drunk driving accident. But the second that this man with the beer starts talking, he realizes that nothing about this is going to be straightforward. Now, he learns that this guy's name is Demetrius Jackson, and Demetrius tells him a truly wild story. It turns out the van isn't his, and he wasn't driving it either. Demetrius claims that he was walking to his mom's house in Tacoma from his girlfriend's place. And if we found the right girlfriend, her house would have been on the Gig Harbor side of the bridge about a mile from the on-ramp. And so he says he is walking, and all of a sudden this woman pulls over in the van and offers him a ride. Now Demetrius says that he could see someone else in the back of the van, but he didn't get a really good look at who didn't matter. He was happy for the ride. So he got into the van and the woman started driving down the bridge, but then out of nowhere, she just stopped midway, gets out of the van and started wandering off toward the safety railing. Now, it doesn't explicitly say in the police reports that Demetrius followed her, but he must have because he says when they got back to the van, together, he saw that the side of the van was damaged. He's just noticing it now? Yeah, so super weird to me. I don't know if he's claiming he maybe got in on the driver side of the van before and therefore didn't notice it, but it's not like the car could have been sideswiped while they were out of it, because all the damage is on the side closest to the guardrail. And actually, to Trooper Knox, it kind of looks like it hit the guardrail. But Demetrius also isn't saying anything about there being a crash while he was in the car. He says he has no idea how the damage happened. But he says the woman had been acting weird. Like, the only thing she said to him was something like, "It's

Transcription truncated.

In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, the mysterious death of a mother of two is ruled a suicide. But her loved ones believe there’s more to her death than meets the eye. And as soon as we looked into her case, the cracks in the official ruling started to show.